A World Too Near (37 page)

Depta stared at the proffered cup, brimming with liquid. How could she gulp down the whole amount? Lady Chiron had thoughtfully equipped the cup with a feeding tube, but still . . .

Lady Chiron took some pity on the Hirrin’s distress, saying “We will enter the binds, Depta. Have you ever wished to see a great thing?”

“Yes, Bright Lady. But . . .” She hesitated to admit her real fear. What if the potion was the same as navitars drank? Depta had no wish to travel the high-sentience path, no wish for sublime things at all; only a worthy calling such as a lowly Hirrin might hope for when schooled in the Magisterium.

Staring
at the awful cup, Depta blurted out, “Will it make me a navitar?”

Chiron murmured, “We do not force a navitar.” Her demeanor became very still, a mode that Depta had come to fear. Yet the lady also looked, if it were possible to believe, confused. “All sentients choose their path, Depta. Your doubts are troubling.”

“Forgive me,” Depta whispered. “Navitars choose what they are. Yet I fear them.”

“They are feared?” Chiron moved her head to one side, as though preferring to look at Depta out of one eye rather than both.

“Yes, Lady. Sometimes the navitars grow so heavy their soft bones bend. Some cannot clean themselves when body functions require such. And the poor creatures are mad.”

A curl appeared at the side of Chiron’s lips. “Hnn. Mad, do you think? But they see more than you. They pity you. They love knowledge, whereas you, Depta, love only life. These are not the same things.” Again, Chiron urged the cup toward her. “No more talk, Depta.”

Her lady was in a most urgent hurry. That she took time to persuade Depta was high consideration. “I will drink, of course.”

“Of course.”

Depta addressed herself to the feeding tube and sucked. The liquid, despite its strong smell, had no taste. She emptied the cup quickly. The liquid ignited a buzz in her long muzzle, as though her teeth had been struck by a hammer.

“Do not fear, Depta,” the lady said. “You will become more than you were. You will see what most under-sentients do not see.”

Whether from stress or the effects of the potion, Depta felt her legs slowly folding under her.

Chiron’s voice continued. “It is what Titus Quinn understood when we dwelled together. As strange as new things may be, they are also sweet and grand. It is always worth it to become greater than you are.”

Depta didn’t feel bound for greatness. From her position on the floor, she found herself staring at the lady’s boots, noticing that the heels now bulged with little curving blades.

Depta was awake. The interior of the ship glowed with preternatural intensity, as though each thing, each piece of instrumentation, were outlined in fire. In Depta’s eyes the Tarig lady bore an unsettling halo, making her hard to look at. Depta’s stomach felt like it had sprouted a hot tumor.

They were deep in the River Nigh.

Chiron stared at the air in front of her, where a field of light occupied the space between her and the bulkhead. From Depta’s angle of view, the display looked like curtains bulging and receding. From time to time, Chiron inserted a hand into the display, with a gesture like brushing aside a curtain.

“The binds,” Chiron murmured. “He has gone deep. We will surprise this navitar.” She turned from the display and sat in the chair she had caused to bud up from the floor. “If the ship bears our Titus, you will meet a person like few others. Stay alert around him, Depta. He will be desperate.”

Her hand plunged into the wavering display. “Now, here is a hard maneuver. Hold fast.”

With her prehensile mouth, Depta lipped a soft, tubular ring that protruded from the wall and held on, swaying and trying not to vomit.

Without windows, the brightship gave no views outward. The vaunted journey into the binds was a mystery so far, except for its effect of a hot, bilious stomach and forced alertness. Depta tried to imagine how she would maintain her equilibrium when they arrived wherever Chiron was driving them. She tried to imagine, as well, sharing this cabin with the man of the Rose, that tragic personage who had once risen high among the lords and in the lady’s estimation, who had become a prince of the Ascendancy and thrown it all away. For this crime he would be buried alive in Chiron’s manse.

The lady’s words came to her with irony:
It is always worth it to become
greater than you are.
Depta wondered if Titus Quinn would think so once sealed in the tunnel.

From her station across the cabin, Chiron cried out, “I have him.” She rose from her chair, nodding at Depta. “Now let us see what we have caught.”

Chiron gave a silent order to dilate the hatchway leading outside. In the cabin one of the walls dimpled, forming an aperture that quickly formed an open door. From this door a wave of pungent air shouldered in, bringing with it a flickering dark light.

Following Chiron to the hatch, Depta could see a gangway was moving out from the brightship to reach for a docking point.

It was a river ship.

Chiron rushed down the steeply pitched gangway, her face bluish in the light of the storm wall. Before her, the deck of the river vessel was deserted.

Moving onto the ramp, Depta looked around her. It appeared they were still on the river’s surface, but she knew they were plunged deep inside it. It appeared that the storm wall loomed over them, and that the ship cut a white path down the molten surface of the Nigh. They were, however, in the binds.

It was a sight that few had ever seen, and though she was grateful for the wonder, all that Depta could think of at present was that the contents of her stomach were trying to climb out.

She followed Chiron down the gangway, moving from the protection of the ship to a realm of noise and chaotic blue-gray. The wind, too slow to be real, pushed at her from various directions like the nudge of a ponderous beast. She set one foot in front of the other, eager to reach the deck of the navitar’s vessel. It hadn’t occurred to Depta that the wall continued into the depths of the river. But of course it would.

Once on deck, she was alone. Around her, the deck and air thrummed in a powerful, relentless rhythm. Nothing showed through the cabin windows but darkness. Chiron had gone inside. Depta struggled to remember her orders:
Remain on deck, allow no one outside.

She looked above her. There hung a keel of a ship, an impossible rendition of the vessel she was on, suspended over her head. The bright was gone. The river moved from under her to over her. Where was up? Where was anything? The thought undid her, and she threw up over the railing, a terrible and prolonged experience.

By the time she got herself upright again, she saw someone standing on the deck at the prow of the ship.

A portly man with a venerable beard stood swaying. Depta called out to him, and he turned, looking alarmed to see her. “No!” he shouted.

“Go back inside,” Depta said. She repeated this louder because the quasi-wind threw away her voice.

Ignoring Depta’s command, the man climbed onto the lower rung of the railing, bracing his legs so as not to topple. Why would he climb the railing?

As Depta approached him, he looked half-crazed.

“Tarig,” he said, pointing to the cabin.

Depta understood. Chiron had wakened him, alarmed him. “She is looking for someone. No harm comes to anyone, be assured.”

His face flickered blue and silver in the fragmented light. “Looking for who? For me? Let it not be me.”

“No, go back inside. You are not the one.” As ill as Depta felt, she could only pity this man’s terror. Awakened from a deep stupor, to look into the eyes of a Tarig. If he knew it was one of the Five, he would be undone.

His voice broke as he said, “I promised my father I would never suffer the garrote.”

“Nor will you, Excellency. Be calm.”

He nodded.

Depta was relieved that he seemed to be listening to reason. And perhaps he would have complied, were it not for the fact that Chiron just then emerged from the hatchway onto the deck.

Seeing her, the man drew back. Untangling his legs from the rail, he stood on the top, facing outward, balancing. Then he jumped.

Depta rushed to the spot where he had stood. Looking over the rail, she found the
place where he had splashed into the Nigh: his plunge had created a sluggish silver whirlpool, but frozen to a standstill. She tried to process the thought: A man had just jumped to his death.

Chiron joined her at the rail. “This is not the ship we seek.”

“He fell,” Depta said numbly. “He jumped.”

“Yes. He was not the godman who helped Titus Quinn. We assured him he was not. But he had not his wits about him.”

Depta looked down at the frozen funnel. To her horror, she could still see the man’s beard poking through. “We must save him, Bright Lady,” she cried.

Chiron looked down. “No. He would not thank you for it.” She strode off toward the waiting brightship.

Depta staggered after her mistress. Depta could have pulled the man from the river. But what would he be then? Would he curse her for it, or have the wits to curse? Taking a last look from the ramp, she saw that the funnel had disappeared from the river’s surface.

Chiron was already gone, leaving behind too much death. Too little pity.

Her mind congealed in cold dismay. At this moment, Depta did not love the Tarig lady.

The steep pitch of the vessel’s deck pinned Quinn and Anzi into the bulkhead. Far from tiptoeing into the binds, Jesid had them in a nosedive.

Heedless of the tilted deck, Lord Oventroe clambered up the stairs to the pilothouse, where, by the sound of it, he confronted the ship keeper and then Jesid.

At Quinn’s side, Anzi said, “Did the pilot see a brightship?”

Had their Tarig pursuers found them, forcing the navitar to push the limits of the vessel?

Quinn looked around the cabin. They were alone, which meant Benhu had been stranded on the deck when the ship plunged. He staggered to his feet. “Anzi, Benhu is still out there.” He picked his way across the lurching deck to the cabin hatchway.

Outside, Quinn shouted for Benhu, who rounded the stern and came wobbling forward, hands outstretched. As the ship shuddered and pitched, Benhu’s feet slipped out from under him, and he crashed into the bulkhead. So fierce was the ship’s speed that the fuel funnel on the prow dripped bullets of exotic matter, flinging them into the air and causing Benhu to cringe in place. Quinn staggered forward, from railing to bulkhead and back again, at last managing to latch onto Benhu with one hand. He yanked Benhu to a standing position and dragged him to the passenger cabin hatchway.

Anzi was there to take Benhu, and hauled him onto the floor where she had piled a few blankets. Quinn pressed his weight against the hatch and forced it closed against a heavy pressure of wind that now screamed over the deck.

“Down,” Anzi cried.

Quinn went to hands and knees and made his way to the prostrate Benhu. “Are you hurt?”

Benhu grimaced. “I think I broke my head from that fall.”

Relieved that it was no worse, Quinn said, “But Benhu, how will we know?”

The godman managed an indignant smirk just as the lights went out.

The ship had entered the binds. A purple light cascaded over them like a blanket of morphine. In response to the sedating effects, the three of them sprawled out, but Quinn fought it. “Stay awake,” he urged Anzi, shaking her.

Anzi’s hands groped for him, like some sea creature trying to pull him under. “Sleep is best, Dai Shen,” she said, calling him by that former name.

No. Sleep wasn’t best. Quinn looked down at the nest of blankets. Benhu was already out cold, and Anzi sinking fast. He backed up and leaned against the bulkhead, trying to stay upright.

The deck under him went from pitch to yaw with alarming abandon. Out the windows he saw a frozen landscape of storm clouds speared by hardened lightning. Like a series of snapshots, the picture changed. He stared out the portholes, watching for brightships.

No sound came from the companionway or the pilot’s cabin. That, more than anything, gave Quinn concern. When he’d left to help Benhu, there had been shouting up there.

He glanced at the portholes. The blue-black wall surrounding them was rent here and there by incandescent cracks. These blinding glimpses mixed with the storm’s purple glow to form a bruising light.

He woke with a start as his head bounced down at his sternum. Sleep had caught up with him after all. He had sunk to the floor against the bulkhead.

From above he heard the navitar moan: “Sleep, traveler, sleep. . . .”

The tone of the voice filled Quinn with dread. The fact that the navitar knew he was awake unnerved him. He remembered from his last trip on the Nigh that high emotion came with the territory. Even so, this time, something was wrong.

He went for the companionway. On the way, he knelt by Anzi. She lay on her back, her hair wild, static electricity sending white tendrils climbing up his legs. He backed away. The pilothouse. He had to get to Jesid.

Why?

Trying to kill us.

No, trying to save us from Lady Chiron. She is the one who is coming, of course. He was so tired. Perhaps he would just lie down with her once more. He loathed himself for the thought. With a massive will, he lunged for the stairs, dragging himself up the companionway.

At the head of the stairs he saw Jesid standing on his dais. He had dropped his red caftan on the deck, and was dressed only in a loincloth. His head and shoulders were thrust through the navitar’s port in the ceiling, where Quinn could see him raising his hands to the sky, collecting the binds to himself. At his feet, his Ysli ship keeper slept in a hairy knot.

In the far corner, Lord Oventroe hunched over a shelf protruding from the wall, examining something.

Afterward, Quinn tried to remember the sequence of events. Had his coming up the stairs been the cause of the disaster, or would it have happened anyway? Did the binds show Jesid what would be, or what might be? Was there a difference?

Quinn thought he saw a spark come from Oventroe’s hand. He moved closer to Oventroe’s workstation.